


Severus Snape Sends His Regrets

by tjs_whatnot



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Dark, Erotica, Explicit Sexual Content, First War with Voldemort, Masturbation, Order of the Phoenix - Freeform, Wizarding Wars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-06-26
Updated: 2008-06-26
Packaged: 2018-10-27 07:54:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10804974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tjs_whatnot/pseuds/tjs_whatnot
Summary: What do you give the happy couple who has everything?What if Harry wasn’t the only Potter who received a few of Snape’s choice memories?





	Severus Snape Sends His Regrets

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Annie, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Quidditch Pitch](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Quidditch_Pitch), which went offline in 2015 when the hosting expired, at a time I was not able to renew it. I contacted Open Doors, hoping to preserve the archive using an old backup, and began importing these works as an Open Doors-approved project in April 2017. Open Doors e-mailed all authors about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact us using the e-mail address on [The Quidditch Pitch collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thequidditchpitch/profile).
> 
> **Author's notes:**
> 
> This was written for Less for you's gift exchange! 
> 
> I don't think it's as dark as some do. Just because it starts with Severus wanking in a shower and ends with him getting all Unforgiveable on Pettigrew doesn't mean that there isn't laughs in between, right?

Taking his wet cock into his fist, Severus Snape began tugging vigorously, hoping the heat from the shower and the satisfaction of release would ease his tensions. This need he had to ejaculate every time someone angered him had to be stopped. He feared what would happen as the imbeciles seemed to be increasing, and if Potter had his way, breeding any day now.

Was it the thought of Potter or the length of time in the shower that made the water seem suddenly frigid? Either way, he needed to ejaculate soon; the icy water was causing him to lose his erection. He thought of Lily, of her silky, white thighs spread for him. Within seconds, he had to clutch the wall to keep on his feet, as his come circled the drain.

He was going to miss the bathrooms of Hogwarts. As odd as it seemed, there was much more privacy in a bathroom he shared with about three dozen other dirty, randy Slytherin boys then there was at home. For instance, if he were to spend all of his time wanking in the showers of Hogwarts, chances were, he wasn’t the only one. But at home, there were eyes on him constantly and judgments passed for every misdeed.

He needed a flat of his own and a bird or two to keep the need for wanking to a minimum. Giving up on Lily and her poor taste in companions earlier in the year, he was finally ready to move on and seek his own future in the bed of other women, preferably many other women in many other beds.

It was all part of his new regime, his new and improved Severus, and it was all about power. His whole life had been about a lack of power, but now, with the help of powerful friends and the teaching of his new Dark Lord, he was going to be triumphant at whatever he attempted. He could feel it in his bones, and as he felt that power, he once again grasped his abused cock.

***  
“Severus, why do you need this place?” Eileen Snape asked her son as they walked around the empty flat.

Severus looked at her incredulously. “Are you joking? Do you really think I would continue to live under your roof with that man, that _Muggle_ for a moment past my legal obligation to do so? You cannot be serious.”

With brimming eyes, Eileen turned away to hide her pain. Severus tried to ignore it, tried to remember that people that aligned themselves with Muggles got what they deserved. He could no longer take responsibility for his mother’s bad choices.

Despite himself, his voice softened. “I just need to be my own man. To be something I can’t be there.”

She continued to look out a dusty window to the dingy, dark alleyway below. Nodding barely perceptibly, she whispered, “But Knockturn Alley?”

Severus laughed. “Oh Mother, it only looks like this now. Just wait. Soon there will be a new revitalization to this whole neighborhood. We will turn this neighborhood around and it will be an example of what wizards can do when they are determined and not under tired, outdated regulations that do more to thwart magic in the name of Muggle protection then it is about rights for individuals.”

His mother shivered. “You sound like you’ve swallowed the brochure whole.”

Severus laughed. “I have, I have.”

“I don’t know where this hatred for Muggles comes from. Is it about that Lily? You know I never liked her.”

Laughter evaporated instantly, as his wrath rose, breathing hot and incinerating the mirth.

“About Lily? You can think of no other reason I might loathe Muggles? Shall I show you?” He lifted his shirt to show the welts that, of course, she knew were there but seemed to have tried to forget. “Or what about this?” he said, gingerly caressing her ear where it had been burned so badly that no bit of magic had been able to heal.

She crumbled and he began pacing, refusing to fall for the old trap. Choosing to ignore her grief for things she refused to change, he asked, “Why did you think Lily had anything to do with this?”

After a moment of composing herself, she said, “Well, I know she is a Muggleborn and that you cared for her greatly and that she is marrying that Pureblood scum.”

Smiling, Severus remembered why it was he loved his mother—because, besides the one glaring exception—Severus’ enemies were her enemies, no questions asked. He sat down beside her and took her into his arms. “Her loss.”

***  
Sitting at the back of the room at the next Death Eater rally, he couldn’t stop staring at Lucius Malfoy’s new bride. The Dark Lord talked about the natural order, how the wizards had willingly allowed themselves to become less, based on their ability to perform magic. They had slunk away from their place and allowed Muggles and naïve Muggle-loving wizards to place secrecy above rights. While he listened to the melodious timbre of the man he respected more than any other he’d ever meet, he watched Narcissa.

Her head bowed demurely accentuated her delicate features. The long line of her exposed neck, her hair in a loose bun, so proper and refined. He never knew if it was the words of power or the untouchable beauty, but he’d never been to a rally that he didn’t have to go out after and find himself a cheap whore that he could pretend was virtuous and pure. That was a great thing about his seedy neighborhood in Knockturn Alley, every depravity was for sale, no matter what he told his mother.

That was exactly where he was headed as he walked through The Leaky Cauldron on the way to Diagon Alley. So determined to gain release, he almost didn’t hear someone call his name until she repeated herself and the hair on the back of his neck stood up. He knew that voice.

She was sitting at the bar, as if waiting for someone to join her. She looked overjoyed to see him. He couldn’t remember the last time she had been this excited to see his appearance.

“Lily,” he forced himself to say at a normal voice. “Or is it Mrs. Potter yet?” he spat.

“Nope, not yet,” she said, ignoring the tone.

“I guess my invitation got lost in the mail.”

“You know I can’t invite you,” Lily said, actually sounding a bit sad about it. A bit.

He looked around. “You alone?”

“Yes. I’m waiting for someone.”

“Oh? Who?”

“You.”

He cursed his heart’s sudden swell and his blood’s hasty retreat from his brain at the word. He also had to deny to himself that she had said it in a new, smoky timbre, as if it meant more. All of these symptoms of hope had gotten him in more trouble then he’d like to remember — with very little actual reward.

“Can we go somewhere and talk?” she asked after studying his struggle for a moment.

He nodded, wondering if she just didn’t want to be seen with him. But then she went to the barkeep, asked for a booth in the quietest corner and ordered a bottle of Firewhisky.

“Coming Sev?” she asked, bottle in one hand, two glasses in the other and that smile, that smile that had been the beginning of so many nights of adventure.

Was he coming? Was there a power in the universe that would have stopped him? Feeling a bit like a reluctant lodestone tied to her magnetic pull, he followed, cursing to himself as he went; he was supposed to be over her.

“Why are you here looking for me on the eve of your wedding?”

She shrugged. “It’s not the eve of my wedding.”

“No? When is the happy occasion? Want to make sure I get my gift in time.”

She poured the glasses full. “You know I can’t tell you that either.”

“You really think I’d crash your damn wedding?”

She raised her glass and waited for him to raise his own. When he didn’t, she slammed her drink without him. “It’s not you we’re afraid of crashing our wedding. Wouldn’t want any of your creepy friends there causing trouble, no offense.”

Now he raised his glass. “None taken.”

The liquid burned going down his throat. He winced and she laughed. “You always hated this stuff, didn’t you?”

He poured them another glass. “It grows on me.”

She laughed and he watched her, amazed. How can she have the same laugh she had created when they were children sitting on the porch of an old abandoned house and mocking their professors during the summer holidays. How could he have forgotten about that laugh?

“Oh Sev, I’ve missed you. Why can’t we, just for one night, forget that we aren’t the best of friends anymore, that we have different friends and are on opposite sides? Can’t we just sit here, get drunk like old times?”

It took him only a fraction of a second to consider. He remembered what usually happened at the end of their drunken nights. He raised his glass. “To memory lane.”

She swallowed her drink too. “Just, no talking of James…”

“Or Dumbledore…”

“Or my friends…”

“My friends…”

“War…”

“Blood status…”

They both smiled. “So about bunnies and rainbows then?” Severus said.

“You and me, we can talk about you and me.”

“You and me. I’d like that,” he said with a lick of his lips.

Raising their glasses again, they toasted.

They talked of the first time they meet, about her sister, about his mother, about their first year of Hogwarts and how they had been so excited to go, but how they feared it would change everything. It hadn’t. They were still friends, and that summer they spent every day together. The next year was the same. It wasn’t until their fourth year that they started drifting a bit, with different friends. But they always had their shared classes, shared interests of potions and Transfiguration and shared summers.

“Remember when we ran away that first time?” Lily asked, laughing.

Severus noticed that she wasn’t even slurring her words yet and then cursed his memory. He had forgotten how well she held her liquor. “Which first time?”

“The first time. When you came to my house, said you were leaving and you were never coming back. I wasn’t going to let you go and have adventure without me and so we went to the river and we hid there, wondering how long it would take our parents to come looking.”

“Six hours. It took six hours for your nosy, snively sister to come and then go and tattle.”

“Yes, dear Toonie. She sends her love.”

Severus spit out his drink. “Ew, no she doesn’t.”

“No, of course not. We don’t really talk that much. Turns out, she hates James more then she hated you.”

Severus raised his glass. “Knew I liked that girl.”

Lily smirked and changed the subject. “What about that first time we ran away to London?”

“How could I forget? We were thirteen and found that flying carpet in my attic. We were gone for a day in a half and I thought we had gotten away with it. Thought your parents had resigned that they were never going to find you. Actually believed that we were the only people in the world, hiding out in this very tavern.”

“You were very mature for your age; of course they didn’t question when your squeaky voice asked for a room,” Lily said.

“Of course. It wasn’t until two days later when my mother came to collect us that I found out that you had told your parents that you were going.”

Lily laughed guiltily. “How do you think they let me stay out for two days? You needed company didn’t you?”

“Yes I did,” Severus said, trying to keep the melancholy out of his voice. Why couldn’t they always be like this? Why had she given up on him? He tried not to imagine what his life would be like now, with her in it.

He swallowed his bitterness with another shot of Firewhisky; it no longer burned going down. Noticing they had gone through half a bottle, he took the stroll down memory lane onto a bit riskier avenue.

“Remember the first time we kissed?”

She looked at him and her eyes danced. “Hard to forget.”

He blushed. “Not _that_ first time. No, I mean when we were eleven. It was our first night at Hogwarts, both of us terrified to be separated with strangers, we held on to each other, crouched in a corner of the Great Hall, and then you…well…you just kissed me.”

“Then McGonagall caught us and sent us scurrying. She never really trusted me for a long time after that.”

“Well, you were a little hussy.”

“You’re such a jackass,” Lily said, trying not to smile.

They both sipped their drinks for a moment before Lily voiced what they were probably both thinking of. “I thought you meant that other first time. That was the more memorable.”

Severus blushed again. “That had never happened to me before.”

Squeezing his free hand, she reassured him. “It was sweet.”

“Yeah, kissing a bloke and having him get a stiffy immediately is definitely hot.”

“Are you kidding? It was amazingly so. To know I had that power. I’d never wanted you more.”

“You’re drunk.”

“A little. But you know what? I’ve never got a guy to do that before with just a kiss.”

“I’m sure it’s not from a lack of trying.”

“Such a jackass!”

He beamed at her, like a naughty schoolchild. “You remember the first time?”

She swallowed, blushed and then admitted, “Barely. I was pretty drunk.”

“Wow. You really know how to stroke a man’s ego, don’t you?”

She smirked, but ignored the double entendre. “I was joking; of course I remember.”

“We were pretty drunk though.”

“And high. Your dad always had the best stuff.”

“Yeah, that beating was totally worth it.”

Lily’s smile vanished. “How are your parents?”

Severus shrugged. “Haven’t killed each other yet.”

There was a moment of silence. “I’ve really missed you, Sev.”

Severus just watched her, waiting for the punch line, the favor or the pleas for rehabilitation. “Don’t you miss me, ever?” she asked.

“Don’t be daft. You’ve never had to doubt my feelings for you. Despite my best efforts, I’ve made them painfully obvious.”

Reaching for and grasping both his hands in hers, she squeezed gently. “I know.”

“Why are you here?” Severus whispered.

“I told you. I missed you.”

“So, tonight, for some reason, you missed me? Had to see me?”

“Should I go?” she whispered back, matching his tone.

There was no way he would say yes, but for a moment, he wondered what she would do if he did. “No, but I’d like the truth.”

She withdrew her hands and fumbled in her pockets. “You got a fag?”

“Mr. Studley McQuidditch Star lets you smoke?”

“What Studley doesn’t know won’t kill him,” she answered.

_Yeah, she’s drunk_ , Severus thought, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a crumpled pack of stale cigarette. He lit hers and then lit one for himself as well, coughing instantly.

“So are you going to tell me?”

“Tell you what?” Lily evaded.

“The truth.”

Lily sighed, took a drag, tried unsuccessfully blowing smoke-rings and then said, “This is hard for me to say, and I don’t want you to read too much into it.”

Severus nodded.

“When things get to me, or I get sad, nervous, scared or any other extreme emotion, I think of you and how we were there for each other through all those emotions for so long. I remember how we comforted each other and I miss you.”

Was it possible for one’s heart to rip in two, with no other provocation then two separate desires raging inside them? Severus wondered. First, he wanted to spit in her face. How dare she assume that he had nothing better to do then sit and wait for her to _need_ him? However, the louder bit was screaming over all other thought: she _needed_ him!

“I remember. The only difference is, when I have those desires to see you, I can’t.”

He put out his cigarette in his half-full glass.

“I guess I should go,” Lily whispered, her eyes moist.

He didn’t stop her. He watched her get up, take one last look at him and walk away. He watched her walk out the door. Just to see what it was like to deny her.

She got only a few feet from the back door to the wall beyond it before he caught her to him and spun her around with a pop.

“Wha—” Lily started before Severus crushed his lips to hers, stopping her inquisition.

In a blink of an eye, they were in Severus’ flat. Lily didn’t ask why, how, or even where. She didn’t pull away from his unrelenting claim on her lips, her mouth, her body.

 

Untangling from where he had knotted himself around her, he removed the robes he had been wearing from the rally. She removed her traveling cloak. Neither of them said a word, but kept their smoldering eyes trained on each other. Severus noted what Lily was wearing under her cloak and wondered if she had gotten dressed that evening confident that this was how it would be ending. She was wearing a sleeveless, honey-brown dress that flowed liquidly to her knees and plunged at her chest. The color highlighted the tan she had acquired in the weeks since graduation, the shape highlighting the taut, athletic body it covered.

Severus walked around her in his customary black, black trousers and black long-sleeved t-shirt. She followed him with her eyes, never moving her body. While he stood behind her, she dipped her head so that her hair obscured her inquisitive eyes, but exposed the naked back of her neck. The same unattainable thoughts he had earlier with Narcissa and the aphrodisiac of it, the power of it, brought him to her.

Running one of his long fingers up the cloth of her dress along her spine, Severus watched the goose bumps form on the flesh of her shoulders. Unzipping the dress, he ran his tongue along her shoulder blade and up to her the place where shoulder meets neck, sucking gently, slipping the strap down her arm.

She didn’t pull away, but she did utter the first words since arriving. “No marking the skin.” It was a declaration that she knew what she was doing and she wanted it done anyway. “Take me any way you want, but don’t leave the evidence of it on my skin.”

“Take you?” Severus whispered into her ear.

She moaned, putting her head back to his shoulder as she leaned against him. “Any way you want.”

Running his fingers gently down her arms, resting on her hipbone before following the pelvic bone further down, he balled the cloth of her dress in his fingers as she shrugged the remaining shoulder strap off and the dress slid down her body as if in slow motion. He released his fingers and the dress continued its descent, pooling at her feet.

He was now confident that she had known exactly where this night would end as her naked flesh warmed him and his erection pulled tightly against the restraint of his clothes.

As his hands explored his long lost lover’s body, hers searched blindly for the entrance to his trousers. Expertly, she snaked her hands behind her back, between their two bodies and worked the buttons. Hastily working the zipper with one hand, she slid her other between his skin and his pants. Right before she found what she was looking for, Severus turned her around forcibly, pushing her away for a moment as he removed his shirt and brought her once again to him and his needy mouth. Their tongues danced as they moved from her mouth to his and back again, both of their mouths opening wider and wanting more as their hands continued to explore each other’s bodies.

Severus was amazed that Lily’s breasts still felt the same to his nimble fingers and when he touched them just so and they responded by her nipples growing firm, he took one then the other of them in his mouth as she once again found his cock and began slowly stroking it. This time, he didn’t push her away, but instead pushed down gently on her shoulders.

She took the meaning of the gesture and whispered in his ear, “Anything you want.” She began kissing her way down his chest and torso, before getting on her knees.

Watching her prepare to service him filled him with a surge of power that all the times of demeaning sex with nameless woman doing unspeakable things by his bidding had never done.

He watched as her dainty tongue licked its way up his shaft. As she got to the top, she stole a wicked glance up to him before taking his tip in her mouth, wetting it. He moaned as he dug the fingers of his right hand into the tangles of her auburn hair. Seemingly urged by his exaltations and slight pressure to her head, she opened herself wider and took him in.

Closing his eyes, he allowed himself to be caught up in the feeling of the only woman he had loved and lost, giving him one of the greatest pleasures imaginable as she hollowed her cheeks against him and continued gulping him in and then sliding him out. His hips began pumping instinctually, first a slight movement and then a rocking that almost caused loss of balance as Lily’s ministrations became faster and deeper. Before he even knew it was beginning, it was over and he had come in her mouth. Awestruck, he felt her swallow against his length before she pulled away and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, once again giving him a wicked look.

Severus joined her on his knees and gently and slowly kissed her deep, the taste of him overriding the taste of smoke and Firewhisky that was there before.

“Mark me,” he said after pulling away.

She looked puzzled, then he pulled back his head and exposed his neck. She took his meaning and began sucking deeply against his skin obediently. Again he felt the surge of power. With one hand, he began caressing her breast, with the other he reached lower, working his thin, delicate digits to her warm middle.

“Harder,” he ordered as he inserted a finger in between the folds of her. She gasped, spreading herself wider. As she did as was told, sucking his skin painfully, he worked another of his fingers inside her.

As he began to explore the walls of her with his fingers, she rotated her hips, urging him further and deeper as she moved from one spot of his neck and chest to the next leaving welts and nibbles behind.

Growling against his skin, she grasped his hand and forced him to assail her brutally, unable to get enough. This time, he did as he was told. As her orgasm washed over her, he felt an overpowering pain, completely unrelated, but somehow connected. In her rapture, she had bitten down against his chest so hard that he felt his skin actually split.

With jagged breath and smoldering eyes trained on his, she ran her tongue along the wound, cauterizing it. He crushed her to him, bringing his lips to hers. He probed her mouth with his tongue, tasting his blood in her mouth. He had never wanted her more.

He pulled away for a breath, and to collect them off their knees, but she wouldn’t let him go. With her teeth, she bit lightly on his lower lip, not breaking the skin this time, but seizing him to her nonetheless. He growled against her. In one fluid movement, he was on his feet and had her in his arms, her legs wrapped around his torso. He felt the blood pounding in his abused lip and growled again, as she finally released him so that he could deposit her none-to-gently on his poorly made bed.

“This place is disgusting,” Lily spat.

“You’re disgusting,” Severus bit back.

“Yeah? What are you going to do about it?”

He was on top of her, his tongue teasing hers, then hot in her ear, “You need a bath.”

She arched her back against the sensation, her taut nipples grazing his chest. He took one in his mouth. Gently, he clasped his teeth around the nipple and tugged with a snarl.

“Not the skin,” she breathed deeply, the tone and the request contradictory. He bit down harder.

“Fuck!” she said, pushing hard against his shoulders. He relented and released her, only to be smacked hard against the face for his troubles. “I said not the skin!”

He couldn’t speak. The sensation of anger and power—his two strongest turn-ons exploding inside of him like the sting her assault had caused. Keeping himself hovered over her with one arm, he used the other hand to feel his face. It was tender to the touch and there would definitely be a mark. His expression must have scared her because she bit her bottom lip nervously and watched him carefully.

“That’s the way you want it?” he asked, not even hiding the danger in his voice.

“What way?” she asked, her voice shaking slightly.

“Rough,” he answered with a smirk.

She didn’t answer but continued to watch him, her lip in her teeth. Then she nodded slightly.

He collapsed on top of her, pinning her to him and snarled into her neck. She arched her back again then wrapped her arms around him tightly.

Licking her lips open, he snaked his tongue into her mouth as he positioned himself to take her. She gasped as he reached in between them and spread her farther apart, rubbing against her nub and flicking expertly.

“Fuck me,” Lily cried out desperately, scratching her nails down his back and lifting her hips, bringing her knees up to his head.

Teasing her clit, he ordered, “Say it.”

“Please Sev. _Please_!”

The sting of the scratches down his back fought with the throb of her handprint on his face and the bite on his chest and each exhilarated him as much as hearing her beg for him did. He finally penetrated her; it was everything he remembered.

He groaned as he pushed into her and found the place that made her hold her breath for the tiniest of moments and he stopped there, watching her fighting for air. The idea of having her drift to oblivion in his arms was tempting but the next part was sweeter and he relented and watched her pant hungrily.

“ _Sev,_ ” she whispered, breathily, “feel…so…good.”

“How good?” he asked, locking eyes and pulling out then back in, slowly.

“The…best…”

“The very best?” he asked, repeating the motion, torturously slow.

She nodded and looked away, pumping her hips to drive him deeper.

“Say it.”

“No one…better…”

Burying his head into her neck and smiling, he rode her harder and deeper as she begged him to continue and then stop and then to never stop, never stop, oh Merlin, please don’t ever stop.

As they got closer to orgasm and his whole body began to ache with the need to release, he knew she shared his burning desire as she began to mark him once again along his back, arms and any other piece of skin she could reach. He fought hard against his need, wanting to bring it out of her first. He imagined that she didn’t get that opportunity in her everyday life, he thought with a smug smile, slowing down, savoring every sensation as his sweaty body slid along hers and her back arched one last time. She came in waves and he caught the last tide and rode along with her, never wanting to dock on shore.

Collapsing side by side, he held her close to him for a long time before noticing the sniffling noise coming from her. Burying his head in her fragrant-from-exertion hair, he tried to block it from his weary mind. He cursed his spotty memory. Of course he remembered what happened after she’d had a few to drink; what he failed every time to recollect was what happened when she sobered up.

When he could no longer ignore her guilt-soaked tears, he turned her over so that she was laying on her back and he could look at her. The tears were falling and drying along her temples.

“What’s wrong?”

She looked ashamed of herself. Snaking her arms free of him, she wiped her eyes and then took his face in her wet hands. “You know I love you, right?”

Swallowing hard, afraid to say anything that would wake him from this dream, for, of course it had to be a dream, of course she was not asking that question. He nodded. Then he knew why she asked and whispered, “You have to go?”

“Yes. I shouldn’t have…I mean…” she stopped.

“You don’t have to go.”

More tears slid down her face. “I do. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for this—”

“Yes you did.” Severus cut over her excuse.

She looked away.

“Why did you come here then? Why are you here with me if you are so in love with _him_?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? What _do_ you know?”

“I know that I wish things could be different. I love James; he is my future. But you, you are everything I was.”

“So in this in between time when you can’t be who you want yet, and you are no longer who you were, what? You bounce around from bed to bed looking for something to be?”

“Don’t be cruel.” She sat up, adjusting the sheets to cover herself. “I know I’m not explaining myself well, and you have every reason to hate me. Maybe I did come looking for you tonight for the reason you think, but I didn’t mean…I didn’t…”

“Didn’t what?” Severus said, growing incredibly impatient with her lack of articulation.

“I didn’t think about you. About how it would be for you,” she whispered, as if it spoken softly would make it less painful.

He barked, “Of course you didn’t. You never have.”

“That’s not true. You know that’s not true. I just get so…confused. Don’t you ever?”

He got off the bed, not caring about hiding anything. She winced at the scars she had inflicted, but those weren’t the scars that Severus was concerned with as he began throwing on clothes and violently tossing her things on the abandoned bed.

“Every time I look at you, I get confused. I forget what you’ve become and I imagine that you are back to what you were. I confuse the girl I knew and loved with the,” he snarled, “ _whore_ who smiles and laughs and has to get drunk to ask for what she really wants, gets drunk so that she can blame her bad judgment on the Firewhisky. You disgust me.”

She sat there and listened to him as if it were her penance. But in the end, he had hit a nerve. “I disgust you? _I_ disgust _you_? If I’m this _whore_ then I should be right up your alley. Throw some money at me and I’ll be like every other woman you’ve been with!”

He wanted to strike her, to send her to her knees clutching an open wound, to hurt her in a way that she would never recover from, but he was almost awed to discover that he wanted something else even more. “Get. Out. Of. My. House. _Now_!”

She exited, hopping on one foot to put the shoe on the other, her dress unzipped and her traveling cloak barely concealing her. There was no backwards glance, no last minute attempts of reconciliation or forgiveness asked for or received. Throwing his head back and balling his hand in fists that cut, he shrieked and cursed against his stupidity and weakness. Then he breathed deep and tried to clear his mind. Finally, he slumped with a sigh. It was over. It had finally ended in such a way that he could let her go. That is what he told himself and he almost believed it this time. Almost believed that she was an evil temptress, the lowest form of scum, that she didn’t deserve to breathe the same air as he, that she was…was a… _Mudblood_.

 

***  
In a daze that he couldn’t get out of all day, he was surprised when the knock on the door woke him out of it. That shock was nothing to when he opened the door.

“My lord,” Severus said, dropping to his knees on his doorstop. Lord Voldemort had come to _his_ unworthy home.

“Severus,” the Dark Lord hissed.

“My lord,” he repeated, still at his master’s feet.

“Rise.”

Severus did as he was told, not looking into the slits of eyes.

“What has happened to you?” The Dark Lord asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Look at yourself.”

Severus turned to the mirror and raised his hand to his face. Where Lily had slapped him the night before was a welt the perfect shape of her splayed fingers. He was glad that he had put back on his trousers and shirt, or he would be revealing a lot more. He turned around to give a feeble excuse but as his eyes met Voldemort’s, he felt his thoughts being sucked out of his head and his topmost ones flashed before him. He saw the bar, Lily laughing, them in his flat, them naked in his flat, them fucking in his flat. Severus had never been more horrified by his own thoughts, never been so exposed.

After his mind was done being violated, he looked at Voldemort and saw him lick his lips with a strange expression. “Delicious,” he purred.

“I have not disappointed you?”

“Disappointed me? For what? Do you think my followers are not allowed to enjoy themselves? I question your choice, but I’m not one to discount childhood friendships.”

“Believe me, that will never happen again. She no longer has any allure for me.”

“Good. Believe me Severus, there are far worthier conquests out there for you if you let me show you.”

Severus felt the surge of power that he had been missing since Lily had walked out of his door.

“We have unique roles in the new regime,” Voldemort said.

The surge intensified dramatically. _We are unique. We._

“We Half-Blood royalty are different then the Malfoys, the Lestranges and the Blacks. They have a responsibility to their lineage and to their blood, their sons and daughters are our futures. But as for me, and I imagine you as well, our father’s tainted blood ends here.”

Severus tried to pick his jaw up off the floor, but found it impossible. So in shock was he that the Dark Lord and he had this similarity, that he was sharing this secret similarity with him that he didn’t even register he had used Severus’ own name for himself. Later he might wonder how he knew about the Half Blood Prince, but now, he was having a hard time wrapping his mind around the fact that Voldemort too had a dirty, scummy Muggle father.

Voldemort continued, not paying Severus’ expression any attention, “So our choices in lovers are not as imperative. There is no need to save ourselves for just the right sort of mate. We men who wish not to procreate can select our bedfellows with no more concern then whether they will satisfy us. The women that will throw themselves at you when you are by my side will permit you to put this…Mudblood behind you once and for all. Do you trust me?”

“With my life,” Severus whispered, still in awe that he had been chosen.

“Good. Then come with me. I have a present for you.”

“Sir?”

“Let’s just say there is a rodent problem that we have eradicated that I think you will most especially find enjoyment from.”

***  
The man suspend in the air looked puny, terrified and emasculated and Severus Snape couldn’t have been more overjoyed. His eyes locked with Severus’ and the fear became a silent, frantic pleading.

“Severus,” the man rasped in his whiny, cracked voice.

Severus approached him torturously slowly. “Don’t you mean Snivellus, Peter?”

Peter Pettigrew shook his head emphatically. “Not me. I never called you that. I always tried—”

“Liar!” Severus shouted.

Peter fidgeted against the ropes, trying to shrink.

“Show him what happens to people who choose the wrong side,” Voldemort urged.

Severus removed his wand, again painfully slowly, and pointed it at his longtime enemy. He had never used an Unforgivable before, but he felt as if he had been saving himself for this very moment.

“ _Crucio_!” he shouted, keeping his wand trained on Peter, shaking with concentration as the rat-faced boy that had gotten so much enjoyment at his friend’s taunts writhed in pain. Severus had never felt stronger.

When he pulled his wand away, removing the curse, Peter was still crying, snot running out of his nostrils and his face pathetic with red splotches. Now other Death Eaters got in on the fun and Severus stood back and watched Voldemort look upon his followers with admiration. They continued the torture until Peter’s body hung limply and his cries had died in his unconscious throat. It wasn’t fun if you couldn’t see the suffering, Severus thought to himself.

They all filed out of the room, leaving Severus, Voldemort and an abused Peter behind. “Stay with him until he comes to. Eventually we’ll want him to join us. Make sure he survives this little initiation ceremony and he knows there is more in store if he again chooses the wrong side.”

“Yes my lord,” Severus said, bowing deeply.

Conjuring a comfortable chair, he sat down and watched the sick excuse for a man spin above him. He couldn’t help but remember all the times this same man, standing next to stronger and more charismatic friends got such pleasure at watching him suffer.

Like the night before with Lily, he took a walk down memory lane. He couldn’t decide which memories were more painful, the seemingly joyful ones with the only woman he had loved and had allowed to rip his heart out, or the memories of bullying and being ganged up on. As he thought though, the memories of Lily and of how she had made him happy, hopeful for things she would never give him were the ones he wanted to purge. The ones of taunting, he decided, would fuel his hatred and allow him to envision the moment when sweet retribution would be his.

Thoughts of memories—ones he’d like to purge and ones he’d like to feed his vengeance — mixed and then as if struck by an electric current, the most amazingly ingenious idea came to him. There was a way to actually purge himself of painful memories that were best forgotten by him while using this same memories against his enemies as a weapon.

He would be giving them a wedding gift after all, he thought to himself with a bitter laugh.

Searching his pockets for a suitable receptacle and a bit of parchment for his congratulations, he found both. The container was a flask filled with a healing serum of his own invention that he began carrying after Lily and he had found the exact right combination of ingredients to make it potent enough for most wounds. The piece of paper was a note from his mother telling him she was okay, no matter what he heard to the contrary.

Dumping the viscous potion, ripping the parchment so that the letter was one half and the other was blank, he removed a quill and dipped it into the potion to use as ink. Raising his wand to his own temple like he had learned in Advanced Defense Against the Dark Arts, he thought of all the times he and Lily had been together in their drunken trysts and pulled them out of his mind in gossamer wisps, depositing them into the flask and shutting it before any escaped. Wouldn’t want James to miss anything.

_James,_

_Just a little show from me to you. In case you need to know exactly how to satisfy your betrothed. If you begin to imagine that these memories might be false and pulled from an overly imaginative mind, ask yourself, how do I know about that mole on her right thigh? Or that particular noise she makes just before she comes?_

_Severus_

After he had prepared his gift, he waited patiently for Peter to awaken. When he did, Severus effortlessly released him from his bounds and smiled as Peter came crashing painfully to the ground. Peter jumped up and scurried to the corner like a caged animal. His eyes darted the room and relaxed only slightly when he saw Severus was the only one in the room.

"Sever—"

" _Imperio_ ," Severus cut across him.

Severus’ wand quivered again with the rush of power. He watched Peter’s eyes glaze over and his body slump as if boneless.

"You will take this to James Potter. You will give it to him without looking into its contents. You will not tell him where you got it or who it is from."

Peter nodded and reached his hand out for the gift.

The minute it left his hands, Severus sighed with a lighter spirit and a completed feeling of a new life beginning, the old one finally, utterly over. _Now_ he was free of her forever.  


* * *


End file.
